Chengdu
Artificial Moon

The Announcement

On 10 October 2018, Wu Chunfeng — chairman of the Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute and head of the Tianfu New Area Science Society — announced the plan at a national innovation and entrepreneurship conference in Chengdu. He stated that China planned to launch an "illumination satellite" from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre by 2020, with three more to follow in 2022 if the first succeeded.

The satellite would carry a large reflective coating to redirect sunlight toward Chengdu at night, producing a "dusk-like glow" Wu described as 8× brighter than the real moon but equivalent to roughly one-fifth the brightness of street lighting. The beam could illuminate an area 10 to 80km in diameter, with precision control down to a few dozen metres. If the 50 sq km around central Chengdu were illuminated, Wu estimated the city would save 1.2 billion yuan ($174 million) annually in electricity costs. Together, three moons could rotate to cover 3,600–6,400 sq km continuously for 24 hours.

The concept, Wu noted, was directly inspired by a French artist who had imagined hanging a necklace of mirrors above the Earth to reflect sunlight through the streets of Paris year-round. It was also — though Wu framed it as novel — a direct continuation of the Znamya concept Russia had attempted in 1993 and 1999.

Why Experts Were Sceptical

The announcement was met with immediate and pointed criticism from aerospace engineers. Ryan Russell, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, identified the central flaw: a satellite at 500km cannot stay above one city. At that altitude, orbital velocity is approximately 7.6 km/s. The satellite would pass overhead and disappear in minutes — exactly the same problem that made Znamya-2's beam a one-second flash rather than a sustained light source.

To actually hover above Chengdu, the satellite would need to be in geostationary orbit at 35,786km altitude — nearly 72 times higher than proposed. But at that distance, a reflective satellite can produce no meaningful illumination at the surface. The physics of reflection over that distance, given the Sun's angular size, would spread the beam across an area so vast as to be invisible against the sky background. As Russell told Discover magazine: "It's a very complicated solution that affects everyone to a simple problem that affects a few. It's light pollution on steroids."

The Quiet Disappearance

After the initial burst of international coverage in October 2018, the project went dark. No launch occurred in 2020. No technical specifications were ever published. No hardware was publicly displayed. No follow-up announcement came in 2022. The Chengdu artificial moon joined a long list of aspirational space proposals that generated headlines and then quietly dissolved without ever becoming hardware.

Whether the project was formally cancelled, indefinitely delayed, or simply abandoned is unknown — no official statement was ever made. Wu Chunfeng's institution, the Tianfu New Area Science Society, has made no further public statements about the programme. The Chinese national space agency (CNSA) was never publicly confirmed as a supporter, and no government funding was announced. The proposal may have been primarily a private initiative that never secured the institutional backing required to progress beyond the announcement stage.